Friday, May 2, 2014

May 1, 2014-A few years ago, I coined the term "Medical Right." It describes the connection between religiously influenced
pseudo-medical organizations and the “Religious Right,” a fundamentalist
political force. “Medical Right”
organizations intentionally mingle politics and religion, with the overall goal of outlawing abortion and - believe it or not - contraceptive methods that they wrongly equate with abortion.

What got me thinking about this today was the mind-boggling news story about James Dobson calling President Obama "the abortion president" at the National Day of Prayer event at the
U.S. Capitol - what is supposed to be a nonpartisan day of unity. Here's the story. Dobson is founder of the right-wing Christian advocacy organization Focus on the
Family - which qualifies as a Medical Right organization because of its anti-abortion politics, which are based on the erroneous notion that contraception is abortion. This is a quote of what he said in the Capitol - a house of democracy, funded by taxpayers of all faiths and no faith.

“President Obama,
before he was elected, made it very clear that he wanted to be the abortion
president. He didn’t make any bones about it. This is
something that he really was going to promote and support, and he has done
that, and in a sense he is the abortion president."

Baffling? Only if you don't realize that Dobson and his nutty Medical Right allies believe that contraception is abortion and that the Affordable Care Act's inclusion of contraceptive coverage is the same as government-sponsored abortion.

Representative Janice Hahn, a California Democrat who is the co-chair of the weekly
congressional prayer breakfast, walked out in disgust. Later, she said: “James Dobson hijacked the National Day
of Prayer - this nonpartisan, nonpolitical National Day of Prayer - to
promote his own distorted political agenda.”

Dobson also read
from a recent letter he said he had sent to “250,000 people,” in which he
proclaimed that “The Creator will not hold us guiltless if we turn a deaf ear
to the cries of innocent babies.”

“So come and get me,
Mr. President, if you must,” Dobson's letter concluded. “I will not yield to your
wicked regulations.”

The event was organized by the National Day of Prayer
Task Force, a conservative evangelical Christian non-profit, whose chairwoman
is James Dobson's wife, Shirley Dobson.

In April, task force
vice chairman John Bornschein defended the event against criticism that it was promoting evangelical beliefs,
describing the day as a nonsectarian gathering.

"This is not
about proselytizing," Bornschein said in April. "This is purely about prayer and
praying for our leadership and asking for God's wisdom and blessing over our
leaders."

Monday, November 26, 2012

Hanna Rosin is a former Washington Post religion reporter who has turned her satiric eye to male-female relationships. This piece in Slate - Fox News Figures Out How Women Have Ruined Men, posted Nov. 26 - is clever but too glib for my taste. The relationships between men and women are changing dramatically and it impacts everyone. The 20th century notion of "male" and "female" roles have been shattered. It's fair to say we have no prototype for a "female" role or "male" role - and that has turned American culture upside-down. Here's her column in full:

When I was writing the End of Men I mulled over many reasons why menin certain segments of society were dropping out of work and familylife: the end of the manufacturing era, the housing crisis, theirunwillingness to get a college degree. I talked to hundreds of men andpondered their stuckness, their general sense that they were illequipped for the modern economy and didn’t quite know how to fix that.I arrived at an imperfect explanation that men were suffering fromsome kind of “masculine mystique,” trapped in an all too narrow set ofsocial roles which were no longer serving them well. What I did notconsider was that the true and complete answer was right under mynose, or more precisely, all over my face, staring back at me from themirror. The reason men could not move forward was ME.

I am angry. I am angry and resentful. I am angry and defensive andresentful and men do not find that attractive. The worst part is, Idid not even know that until I read it in a FOX news story called “TheWar on Men” written by Suzanne Venker, niece of and frequentcollaborator with Phyllis Schlafly. This story has been very popularon the site for many days because it explains so much, so manydynamics that Schlafly tried to make us understand during the courseof her long and patient career but which apparently are even more truetoday.

Venker’s jumping off point is a Pew study showing that the share ofwomen ages 18 to 34 claiming a successful marriage is “one of the mostimportant things in their lives” has risen since 1997 from 28 percentto 37 percent, while the share of men saying the same has dropped from35 percent to 29 percent. At the same time, women have become moreambitious than men. Two-thirds of young women ages 18 to 34 ratecareer high on their list of life priorities, compared with 59 percentof young men. You might wonder, what do these nice young men now givea shit about, if its not family or work? (Halo 4 was not on the list).But this is not where Venker went with it.

But what if the dearth of good men, and ongoing battle of the sexes,is – hold on to your seats – women’s fault? ... After decades ofbrowbeating the American male, men are tired. Tired of being toldthere’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being toldthat if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault.Contrary to what feminists like Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men,say, the so-called rise of women has not threatened men. It has pissedthem off. It has also undermined their ability to becomeself-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family. Men wantto love women, not compete with them. They want to provide for andprotect their families – it’s in their DNA. But modern women won’t letthem.I knew that women had become more educated. I knew they were steadilyearning more money. I knew they had gained a lot of power of late, andsometimes even more money and power than the men around them. But Idid not realize they had become so powerful that they could mess withthe men’s DNA. How did I miss that? How has J.J. Abrams not made amovie about it?

Unfortunately, Venker is somewhat enigmatic about how to reverse thisproblem, beyond a few vague clues. Women, she says, “have the power toturn everything around” (Duh, of course, we have ALL the power). “Allthey have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – andlet men surrender to theirs.” Surrender to my femininity. Surrender tomy femininity. I get the general idea but what does it mean, like, inpractice? Not wear pants so much? Let my hair grow. Ask my boss to payme a little less? Open to ideas.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

What a win for women!
Virginia and the entire country are changing and this election proved it. As of
now, women’s issues are no longer fringe issues and women are no longer a
special interest group. Women
cast the bulk of the votes this election - 53% - and were a force in winning
campaigns across the country. Now we need to be sure
our candidates and elected officials know it.

You
already know the facts but for the record: Nationally President Obama won the
women’s vote by 55% - an 11 point margin (he won by about the same margin in
2008, showing this is likely a reliable shift, not a fluke). In Virginia, he
won the women's vote by 54%. Tim Kaine did slightly better with 56%.
In other swing states, women also favored the President: 51-48 in Florida, 55-44
in New Hampshire, 52-47 in North Carolina, and 57-43 in Iowa.

The largest number of
women ever will serve in the 113th Congress, according to the Center for
American Women and Politics at Rutgers, An all-time high total of 20 women
(16D, 4R) will serve in the Senate, and there will be a record of at least 77
women (57D, 20R) in the U.S. House.

The Rutgers center also
noted that the number of women running for Congress this year beat previous
records. Roughly half the 33 Senate races had a viable female candidate –
another record number. In two of the races, women faced off against each other
(in Hawaii, the winner, Democrat Mazie Hirono, v. Republican Linda Lingle, and in
New York, the winner Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand v. Republican Wendy
Long).

My sense, from talking to
women voters, is that the Virginia Republican’s transvaginal ultrasound
bill was a factor in motivating women to get involved in the campaign and to
vote. Talking about lady parts doesn’t work. Just ask losers Todd Akin and
Richard Mourdock. While women are still outraged about the ultrasound
legislation, the Democrats’ positive, broad, and inclusive messages were
successful in moving the discussion beyond anger. That’s a lesson for us as we
begin the 2013 campaign for governor, lt. governor, attorney general, and all
100 members of the House of Delegates.

Our win among women in
Virginia was also (again, in my opinion) the result of highly effective
outreach by the campaigns to women. Moderate messages and themes worked:
support for Planned Parenthood, equal pay for women, reproductive health care
as a family and economic issue, and the importance of family and medical leave
among them. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and Lilly Ledbetter
(whose name now graces the equal pay legislation signed by President Obama on
his first day in office) made the point that Democrats consider “women’s
issues” to be mainstream, non-controversial family and economic issues.

According to the Rutgers
center, Obama’s win nationally was the second-largest gender gap in American
history, exceeded only by the 1996 election.

There were a number of
firsts this year.

· Elizabeth
Warren is the first woman elected to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate
and takes the seat formerly held by the late Ted Kennedy.

· Rep.
Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin is now the first openly lesbian or gay person
elected to the Senate.

· Both
Baldwin and Rep. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii are also the first women elected from
their states to serve in the Senate. Hirono will serve as the first
Asian-American woman in the U.S. Senate.

· New
Hampshire is now a matriarchy (woman governor, two women senators, two women House
members). The state already had two female senators – Democrat Jeanne
Shaheen and Republican Kelly Ayotte – but now two Democratic women – Carol
Shea-Porter and Ann McLane Kuster – will represent New Hampshire in the House
of Representatives. The state also elected Maggie Hassan, who will be the
country’s only female Democratic governor.

·
In a hotly contested House race in Illinois, Iraq War
veteran Tammy Duckworth prevailed. As a double-amputee, Duckworth will gain
much-needed visibility for people with disabilities in leadership
positions.

Women activists and
voters made the difference in all of these victories, from the top of the
ticket on down. Nationally, we've got to hold Congress accountable for the
policies women support: the Paycheck Fairness Act, strengthening of Social
Security, Medicare, Medicaid and essential social services, fair taxation of
the wealthiest, comprehensive immigration reform and civil rights for all,
including same-sex couples. We must keep moving Virginia and the country forward.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

I'm convinced - we've GOT to engage women if Obama is to win, especially in Virginia. So what does that actually mean to me - or you, reader? How do I help, given the narrow circle in which I move - liberal Democrats, good jobs, educated, fairly well-off, secular? They're already for Obama. (And as of last week, Obama had a double-digit lead among female voters.)

What's the problem? I think it's that there's a certain lack of enthusiasm for Obama (remember the crazy Obama fervor four years ago?) and that Romney is starting to sound intelligent and fluent as he moves into the general election. Where do we start?

Let's think about "women" - Hillary and Palin, for example. As Obama said recently, "women are not some monolithic block. Women are not an interest group." There's no stereotypical "woman." We have to talk woman-to-woman, putting forward our best arguments, not assuming there's a "women's vote" or simplistically thinking there are "women's issues."

White, married, rural and suburban women have been trending Republican for years. In fact, white women as a whole haven’t gone Democratic since 1964. While for single, highly educated and urban women, the opposite is true; those remain reliably Democratic demographics.

Second myth: female voters favor female candidates.

Women consistently say they’d prefer to vote for a woman. But once in the voting booth, they don’t automatically favor female candidates...In fact, women are insulted by appeals that suggest they automatically favor female candidates, which is part of the reason [Hillary] Clinton didn’t play the gender card too overtly through much of the [2008] campaign. Younger women in particular find this “hammer, meet nail” approach offensive. That’s why you rarely hear female candidates in either party making that pitch.

Obama won younger women’s votes, while Hillary Clinton captured women over 65 and barely won a majority of women.Third myth: women vote based on "women's issues, such as abortion rights and contraception."
We don't although women are more more likely than men to rate government policy on birth control as important - 55% to 35% in a recent USA Today-Gallup poll Melinda quotes. In a Gallup poll last year, women are divided on abortion - 49-45%. Melinda comments (and this is really hard to believe, considering 1 in 3 women will have an abortion at some time in her life):

Age and party affiliation are far better predictors than gender of views on abortion.

Myth 4. A candidate’s wife can deliver women’s votes. She can't.

And, finally, myth 5: men decide elections. This is BIG and we need to remember it and tell everyone.

While it’s true that women tune in to campaigns later than men, women turn out to vote in greater numbers — and have done so for decades. Since 1980, the proportion of women who vote has topped the proportion of men who do. And it was higher than ever in 2008, with 65.7 percent of eligible women voting, compared with 61.5 percent of men.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Virginia's Gyno-WarriorsSee you at United Against the War on Women! April 28 in Richmond!

Bob McDonnell and the Republicans have made Virginia a high-profile player in the War on Women. Although the governor backed down on requiring a pre-abortion vaginal probe (aka, state-mandated rape), he fully supported humiliating women with a medically unnecessary, nonconsensual, expensive abdominal ultrasound as a precondition to a legal abortion. This measure and others revealed a frightening disrespect, even contempt for women. Virginia Republicans to be active participants in the national election strategy to win by appealing to sexism and misogyny.

Anti-women bills are a Republican priority. At the top of their agenda has been 1) excluding all coverage of abortion in the new health care law (including allowing hospitals to refuse to admit pregnant women with a life-threatening condition), 2) restricting contraceptive coverage in that law (putting the demands of religiously affiliated institutions that take public funds and serve the public above women’s health care), and 3) defunding the highly regarded national family planning program, including Planned Parenthood clinics. Accordingly, Virginia excluded abortion coverage (except in cases of rape, incest and life endangerment) from the new health insurance exchange and regularly attempts to defund Planned Parenthood. Contraceptive coverage may be next.

While still working on the master strategy of overturning Roe v. Wade, the Republicans’ daily tactic is to “chip away” at services. Two pointless Virginia measures would have done that – an unconstitutional ban on abortion after 20 weeks’ gestation and a ban on Medicaid funds for abortions in the case of a fetus who will not survive. The Medicaid ban was not only cruel, it made no sense. In the last fiscal year only 23 women received state funds to terminate a pregnancy because of a fetal anomaly, costing the Commonwealth less than $15,000. “Chipping away” includes the unnecessary clinic regulations adopted last year, requiring women’s clinics providing first-trimester abortions to meet hospital standards. The intent is to force clinics to close.

Nationally, the most extreme factions back personhood measures, giving full legal rights to a fertilized egg. Virginia’s personhood bill failed when Republicans could not figure out how it could possibly work (the word “person” is defined 118 ways and used some 25,000 times in the Virginia Code) but it will be back.

Some national trends have not yet trickled down to Virginia, but chances are they will. The reason is that the National Right to Life Committee and other national organizations that develop legislation make sure it gets into the hands of state legislators who will fight for it. Among bills to watch for is the racist Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA), which would criminalize abortions for sex-selection and race-selection – despite the fact there is zero evidence of this. Again, the intent is to shut down clinics.

The Republican “warriors” may have gone too far. (Current “joke” – next they’ll require women to paint the nursery and pick the name before an abortion.) Women’s rights supporters can help persuade independent and Republican women to vote for pro-women Democrats by showing how out-of-touch Republicans are. Women need to know that Democrats will fight to defend reproductive health services.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Today, April 26, is Ludwig Wittgenstein's birthday. (Thank you, Garrison Keilor.)I took an introductory philosophy class at Michigan - big disappointment - I wanted the answers and I was given the questions. Wittgenstein, however, stuck with me. We think in language - and how can we think about things that don't have any reality, or a reference in real life experience (or at least that's what I think he thought). So "god" was spoiled for me forever. Whenever I think "god," I feel my mind exploding, metaphorically.

From Garrison Keilor on NPR this morning: ...Wittgentsein is

the man who said, 'Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open": Ludwig Wittgenstein (books by this author), born in Vienna in 1889. He was described by his colleague Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have known of genius as traditionally conceived: passionate, profound, intense, and dominating." He was the youngest of nine children; three of his brothers committed suicide.

Wittgenstein was born into one of the richest families in Austro-Hungary, but he later gave away his inheritance to his siblings, and also to an assortment of Austrian writers and artists, including Rainer Maria Rilke. He once said that the study of philosophy rescued him from nine years of loneliness and wanting to die, yet he tried to leave philosophy several times and pursue another line of work, including serving in the army during World War I, working as a porter at a London hospital, and teaching elementary school. He also considered careers in psychiatry and architecture — going so far as to design and build a house for his sister, which she never liked very much.

Wittgenstein was particularly interested in language. He wrote, "The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for." And, "Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination."

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Being from Chicago, going to school in Michigan and NYC and living in Arlington for 30+ years, I haven't seen a lot of confederate flags. Til yesterday (4/20), at the fabled political gathering called the Shad Planking.

Almost everyone wore stickers saying: "April Is National Confederate History Month" and there were those flags all over. (See the Good Ole Boys photo.) No apologies, no explanations.

Lots of people wore round orange stickers saying "Guns Save Lives." And just about everyone had an "Allen for Senator" sticker. One guy was handling out booklets with the text of the Constitution. McDonnell's remarks were hilarious - he roasted everyone, was particularly hard on Allen, joked about his veto of the redistricting bill.

There was excitement around Allen, not much around Bolling (probably candidate for governor to succeed McDonnell) that I could see, and lots around the Tea Party display and candidate Jamie Radtke. She's 35, smart, educated, reasonably well-spoken. I really hope she gives George Allen a run for the money.

I think I'll go next year - as it's a big election year, it's supposed to be huge. Maybe more than 3 Dems will show (Roslyn Tyler, Bobby Scott and - I heard but did not see -Bill Barlow). Anyone want to drive? It's at least 3 hours each way from NoVA, plus of course time for accidents, backups, and other usual traffic messes.